the day we met Emmy.

Emmy arrived two weeks early and an entirely different astrological sign than we had anticipated.

It was a little after 1am when I woke because I had apparently peed my pants. I was at that glorious point in pregnancy where I was getting up every hour or so to pee at night, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine my bladder had decided to skip the part where it woke me up. I went back to bed after cleaning myself up, only to be jolted back upright when I realized it was happening again – only I definitely did not need to pee. While our labor and delivery classes had assured us that water breaking would be nothing like how it’s depicted in the movies, what they hadn’t mentioned is it can be continuous small gushes, happening minutes apart. After a failed hope that maybe if I went back to sleep this would all be a dream, I poked Alex in the back and told him my water broke. “Are you kidding?,” he said.

It was about 2am when I felt my first contraction. Alex and I were throwing things into a suitcase (because we hadn’t packed our hospital bag yet), and I said to Alex, “Hey, that wasn’t so bad! I can totally handle contractions!” (#famouslastwords) We agreed to wait as long as possible before heading to the hospital, mostly because we didn’t want our first child (aka, our dog), Riley, to be left home alone in the middle of the night. So, we decided to go back to sleep for as long as we could. Alex fell asleep instantly. Seriously. One minute he was talking to me, the next he was snoring, so I did my best to follow suit. Around 4am the contractions were getting more intense and I started timing them. By 5am, I gave up on attempting sleep, and decided to send work emails in between increasingly intense contractions (the messages I got back from my colleagues are definitely some of my all time favorite email exchanges).

I’ll be honest, at this point, I was in pretty terrible pain. The contractions did not feel like anything I had imagined – it was like someone was trying to bend me backwards over their knee and break my spine in half. By 6am I was on my hands and knees in the kitchen, trying any position I could to attempt to alleviate some of the pain and pressure. But, I knew I had to hold out – our doggy daycare didn’t open until 7am.

An hour moves so slowly when it’s bisected by contractions. When the clock finally read 6:30a, I told Alex I was ready to head to the hospital. By 7:30a, we were admitted, and 3cm dilated. Our labor and delivery nurse, Jocelyn, took one look at me and asked if I would like to get an epidural. Now, I always knew I could never be a crunchy mom primarily because of my outlook on drugs – which is, yes please! (And if you don’t know what a crunchy mom is, good for you.) Before I knew what contractions felt like, I had written in my birth plan I would wait to get my epidural until I was at least 6cm dilated because they sometimes slow down the progression of labor. I told Jocelyn to screw my birth plan and to please put me in line for the drugs.

Oh, the sweet, sweet relief of that epidural! I have never held so still in my life as when they were inserting that needle into my spine, even as I felt the peak of a contraction rack my body. But 30 minutes later, with my entire bottom half numb, and a button in my hand to press whenever I wanted more drugs, I finally got some sleep.

The rest of the late morning and early afternoon was just waiting, napping, and Alex visiting the hospital cafeteria and surfing Reddit on his phone. Jocelyn came in and out of the room, checking my progress and delivering giant pitchers of ice cold juice. I remember the stillness of our room, the soft hum of the medical equipment, the curtains drawn so I could nod in and out of sleep, Alex sitting just an arm’s length away. Our final moments as a family of two. Around 3p, Jocelyn checked on me and asked, “Are you having a sensation like you need to poo?” Apparently, I was fully dilated.

The delivery room unfolded like an origami crane – lights came down from the ceiling, a table materialized and nurses unpacked sheets and metal instruments. My OBGYN appeared by my side having just rushed from Northridge to be at my delivery. “It’s time to push,” she said. With my OBGYN holding one leg, and Alex holding the other, I wondered if there was some way to pump the brakes a little here. Could we rewind a few months? I was completely unprepared for this – for the moment I would be transformed into a mother.

My memory of actually delivering Emmy is spotty, coming in and out like scenes from an action movie trailer. I’m pushing, and then I’m waiting. I’m looking at a terrified Alex who is doing his best to smile encouragingly at me, alternating between holding my hand and my leg in between contractions. A nurse is asking me if I want to touch the baby’s head as she’s crowning (I said yes, and immediately regretted it because it was so much grosser than I thought it would be). And then suddenly – a release.

She’s here.

They put Emmy on my chest, she is mewling and wriggling, shocked by the sudden experience of life outside of my body. The nurses are suctioning gunk out of her mouth and nose, wiping her down on top of me. Alex and I both remember noticing with some alarm how much hair covered her arms and shoulders. I remember how slimy and tiny her body felt on my chest. Alex remembers cutting her umbilical cord and being surprised by how much pressure he needed to apply.

This is a day I thought was etched into my brain forever, but even 6 months down the line, I’m finding it harder and harder to recall the details of those first few moments of Emmy’s life. The older she gets, the more the little things from that day escape me, replaced now by new memories of her laughter, or the way her face lights up and her tongue sticks out when she smiles. But I know I’ll always remember meeting Alex’s eyes for the first time after Emmy’s birth, both of us still in disbelief and smiling from ear to ear, completely bonded and transformed forever by the new Aries in our lives.

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[…] time mom, I have been acutely aware of the “firsts” we’ve experienced: the first time I held Emmy close after delivering her; the first time I heard Emmy laugh; the first time she slept through the night. What has been […]